Darwin and Evolution:
From a Catholic Perspective

Joseph Bolin

Are evolution and faith really incompatible? What exactly does the
Catholic Church teach regarding creation - and can science really answer
humanity's greatest question: why am I here? Answers to these questions
will be found in this new booklet which examines the subject in detail.

Darwin
and Evolution: From a Catholic Perspective is published by Catholic
Truth Society, England, and may be ordered from there.

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Selected texts from the book

Certain sections of this booklet are presented here for previewing.
Footnote numbering does not correspond exactly to the printed edition.
Please ask for permission before reposting substantial portions of the
text.

Introduction

Where do I come from? Where am I going? Was I chosen, brought
into
existence by a loving creator, or am I merely the product of blind
chance, of uncaring fate? Few questions are more urgent than these.
Men have traditionally sought, and frequently found, answers to these
questions in religion. The Judaeo-Christian tradition, indeed, gives
a clear answer: God, the benevolent Creator of heaven and earth,
brought me into existence by his loving plan. Certain scientists and
philosophers have vehemently attacked this answer, loudly proclaiming
that human life is a mere happenstance, the product of blind
necessity and chance. The militant atheist Richard Dawkins, author of
The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion,
is among the
most well-known figures in this campaign. A prominent battleground in
the struggle between “science” and “religion” has been the
public schools, with many Christians in favor of teaching
“intelligent design” as an alternative to Darwinian evolution,
and many scientists strongly opposed to this “unscientific”
theory. It has come to the point that we may feel obliged, in spite
of ourselves, to take sides and jump into battle: to argue for
evolution instead of creation, or creation instead of evolution.

(...)

Intelligent
Design Creationism

Intelligent design creationism is the view that God created
the
world by “designing” certain structures within it, either at the
beginning, or at multiple points in its development. Properly
speaking, the theory of intelligent design is not a theory of
creation, and does not presuppose a divine creator. It is rather a
scientific, or pseudo-scientific, theory that the structure of the
world or of living beings shows the working of an intelligent
designer. Yet while this designer could theoretically be some finite
intelligent agent, such as intelligent extraterrestrials, most
adherents of the theory of intelligent design understand God to be
the designer. Consequently, intelligent design theory is often
associated with creationism.

The popular origins of the term “intelligent design” also
demonstrate a link with creationism. The biology textbook Of
Pandas and People has been said to be the first to use the
phrase
“intelligent design” in its present sense,1
and was certainly the first to use the phrase extensively. Early
drafts of this book spoke frequently of creation, defining it as
meaning that “the various forms of life began abruptly through the
agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features
already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers,
beaks, and wings, etc.” It followed what we have called progressive
creationism, though allowing for the possibility of a more rapid
creation, such as creation in six days. After the USA Supreme Court
in Edwards v. Aguillard ruled it unconstitutional
to teach
creation science in public schools, the book’s authors
systematically replaced terms such as “creator” with “intelligent
designer.” The previous definition of “creation” was preserved,
but was now used as a definition of “intelligent design”!2

Two principal arguments are made for intelligent design: one
based
on complexity, the other based on information.
These
arguments for intelligent design may be seen in the work of two key
proponents of the theory, Michael Behe and William Dembski. Behe, a
practicing Catholic and microbiologist, was for a long time a
Darwinist who saw no theological or scientific problems with the
theory of the common descent of living beings by a process of random
change and natural selection. That changed abruptly when he read the
geneticist Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
He describes the experience as world-changing: “When I laid the
book down, I lived in a different world.”3
He began reading with a skeptical eye the claims for evolution in the
scientific literature, and volunteered to lead a seminar titled
“Popular Arguments on Evolution,” in which he and his students
read and discussed pro- and anti-evolution books and articles,
particularly Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in
Crisis
and Richard Dawkin’s The Blind Watchmaker.
The next stage in his engagement with the theory of evolution came
when he read the lawyer Phillip Johnson’s book Darwin
on
Trial, which
argued that if one
did not assume materialism was true, then the evidence for random
mutation and natural selection as the explanation of life on earth is
very small indeed.4
In the following months Behe became involved in debates on evolution
with Phillip Johnson, and worked out the arguments that later became
the basis for his own book Darwin’s Black Box,5
arguments that he believed made a unique contribution from the
perspective of biochemistry.

The key concept
in Behe’s
argument is irreducible complexity.
The argument begins with two premises: (1) certain parts of
organisms, such as the mechanism for blood clotting, or the bacterial
flagellum, are complex,
that is, they are composed of many different parts; (2) all
of these parts are necessary in order to achieve the function; in
other words, the mechanism is irreducibly
complex; the structure cannot be simpler and have the same function.
The second step of the argument is that such an irreducibly complex
mechanism cannot be built up gradually, by a process of natural
selection. If the mechanism producing the function is irreducibly
complex, then intermediate structures would have no function, and
thus no value for the organism; they would not contribute to its
living or reproducing, and so would not be promoted by natural
selection.

The concept of
irreducible
complexity as an objection to evolution by natural selection is not
really new. Darwin himself recognized it: “If it could be
demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly
have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my
theory would absolutely break down.”6
Behe’s contribution was the application of this idea at the
molecular level rather than at the level of large organs such as the
eye. Complex bio-chemical processes are supposed to exemplify exactly
such a complexity as Darwin spoke of. Behe proclaimed that design is
clearly evident at the cellular level, and that this discovery “must
be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of
science,” rivaling those of Newton, Einstein, Lavoisier,
Schrödinger,
Pasteur,
and Darwin.7

While the general principle
is sound,
its application is weak. A “molecular machine” that requires each
of its parts in order to perform its function could have been built
up from parts with different functions. Indeed, this is just what the
theory of evolution would predict! As the ancestors of horses were
not simply “imperfect horses,” but were something other than
horses, so one could expect the precursor of many biological systems
to be not merely imperfect systems of the same type, but systems
functioning somewhat differently.

More generally,
the argument that
some biological system could not have been formed gradually is an
argument based on ignorance: we don’t know how, or at least don’t
know exactly how
such-and-such a function evolved; therefore, it couldn’t have
evolved gradually. This argument is weak, unless we suppose that we
know biochemistry so well that if there were
a gradual way for the function to evolve, we would know it. Since our
knowledge of biochemistry remains quite imperfect regarding many
detailed points, the fact that we do not know in
detail
how gradual evolution of various functional systems could have
happened is a weak argument that it is impossible. But in fact,
possible paths of evolution have been sketched out for the very
things, such as blood clotting, that Behe claims are irreducibly
complex!8

William
Dembski, a mathematician
and philosopher, attempted to give a rigorous, quasi-mathematical
foundation for the theory of intelligent design. In his technical
book The Design Inference,
revised from his Ph.D. dissertation in philosophy and published by
Cambridge University Press in a series on probability theory, he
proposes the three categories of law, chance, or design. If an event
is regular and necessary (or highly probable), then it is the result
of law. If an event
has an intermediate probability, or if it has a very low probability
but is not a particularly special event, then it is the result of
chance. If an event
has a very low probability, and matches an independently given
specification, then it is the result of design.
To describe low probability together with an independent
specification, Dembski uses the term specified
complexity,
or complex specified information.
Dembski was by no means the first to use the notion of specified
complexity. Richard Dawkins himself, explaining why animals seem
designed, employed the same concept: “complicated things have some
quality, specifiable in advance, that is highly unlikely to have been
acquired by random chance alone.”9
Dembski’s innovation is his attempt to use this notion of
complexity to exclude origination through law and chance. In this
original work, The Design Inference,
Dembski did not apply the principle to natural organisms and events,
but in later writings he sought to apply the design
inference to
nature.

There are
several weaknesses in
Dembski’s argument. Simply showing that a large quantity
of information or complexity is present is insufficient, since
complexity can be produced by chance. (An attempt to memorize random
series of numbers quickly shows that randomness and complexity go
together.) Even showing that the complexity somehow fits an
independent pattern is insufficient, since chance together with law
can do this. A computer can take random input, and transform it by a
regular method, or law, so that the result is unique, or highly
complex, on account of the randomness involved, and also highly
specified, on account of the regularity involved. Examples of this
are solutions to problems that are found by the use of computer
genetic algorithms, or unique music that is written by computers. In
some cases, computers have even found better solutions to problems
than humans did. Dr. Adrian Thompson, for example, by means of a
genetic algorithm evolved a device that could distinguish between the
words “go” and “stop,” using only 37 logic gates—far fewer
than a human engineer would need to solve the problem.10
And while computer-generated music may not yet be great music, it is
certainly not mere noise. According to any purely
mathematical
definition of
information, such programs can
produce information.11

In order for
Dembski to apply the
design inference to nature, he needs to exclude such a combination of
chance and law, to exclude the possibility of information in the
sense of new possibilities
being introduced by chance, and becoming specified
information by the regular process of natural selection (organisms
are matched to
their
environment by the greater reproduction of those which match it). The
only way he can do this is to fall back on Behe’s notion of
irreducible complexity.12
That is, he has to posit, implicitly or explicitly, that the
specified information must be introduced in one fell swoop; thus it
cannot be attributed to chance, since the probabilities are far too
small, nor can it be attributed to law, since there is no set law to
produce it. Dembski begins his argument with a different concept than
Behe does, namely that of “information,” but when it comes to
applying the argument to real biological systems, Dembski’s
argument more or less coincides with Behe’s.

(Intelligent
Design and Common Descent has been omitted from this preview...)

Intelligent
Design and
Philosophy

Cardinal Schönborn,
often thought to be on the
side of the
intelligent design school of thought, sees a fundamental failure in
its quasi-scientific attempt to see complexity in nature as proof of
a designer, because design or purpose “cannot be found on the level
of causality with which the scientific method is concerned.” The
limitations of the scientific method do not allow it either to prove
or to disprove an intelligent origin and purpose of the world.13

Indeed, while the theory of
intelligent
design is sometimes seen as the best alternative to radical
neo-Darwinism, the two theories actually share deep roots in common.
Both theories arose in the milieu born of nominalism and scientism,
and try to answer the questions about the origin of life without
substantial reference to philosophy. They abstract from the notions
of nature, substantial form,
and intrinsic purpose,
and share a mechanistic view of living beings: while the theory of
intelligent design claims that a complicated mechanism must be formed
by a designer, Darwinism claims that a mechanism, consisting
essentially of various parts and based on various genes, can arise
gradually. Both theories suppose a false opposition between law and
design, in contrast to classical philosophy, which sees design (i.e.,
the work of intelligence) in every natural law.
Though the
scientific claim of intelligent design—that known natural causes
could not produce the life we see—must finally be judged on its
scientific merit, on how well it corresponds to the evidence, the
philosophical mindset underlying this understanding of intelligent
design is highly questionable.

A positive fruit of
intelligent design
creationism is that it has raised public debate about the legitimate
claims of science, and the relation of philosophy and science. On the
other hand, due to the scientifically dubious arguments made by
proponents of intelligent design, it has also led to suspicions that
support of intelligent design comes merely from Christian bias, and
that faith and science really are opposed, despite the claims of the
Catholic Church to the contrary.

(...)

Thomas
Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas gives precise formulation to the scriptural
and
patristic teaching: to call God the Creator means that all “being”
comes from him,14
that is, the existence of anything whatsoever comes from God, and
depends essentially upon him. “Being” here includes being
active, and so the activity and power of everything derives
from
God’s creative action.

St. Thomas sees the power of God’s creative action not only in
making things exist, but above all in making them
be causes
of other things. The production of one creature by another does not
compete with God’s causality, as though a creature had to be either
from God or from
another creature. Rather, whatever is produced by a creature comes
from God as the first and ultimate cause of it, and from
the creature as a secondary cause. (We are speaking, of course, about
real beings that are
produced; sin, as a moral defect and privation, is not from God.)
Since God is the cause of all other
causes, his causality includes even chance events, which occur by the
coincidence of
two causes.15

St. Thomas sees
the ability of
one natural being to be generated by another natural being as rooted
in “first matter,” the radical possibility of a material being to
become one thing or another. When a natural agent forms a structure
suited for the living activities of growth, etc., the result is not
merely a complex structure, like a machine, but really becomes
a living being. Yet
while matter is
necessary for this change, the change itself cannot be attributed
only to the matter, which is merely the inner root of the possibility
of being a living being; the change must ultimately be attributed to
the cause of
matter, which is
God. This is true not only of the human soul, which in a certain
manner transcends material reality, but of every nature, which is
something more than the stuff
in which it is found. The existence of a natural being cannot be
attributed only to that which materially formed it, but must also be
attributed to the author of nature.

Since created
things receive from
God not only existence, but also the power to be causes of other
things, Thomas’s view of creation leaves room for a natural
sequence such as evolution in the created world, whereby one type of
living being comes from another. We cannot determine a
priori the
extent to which this
can or does happen concretely. We cannot say a
priori,
for example, that a living being can only produce something
essentially like itself, but can only make a judgment about this on
the basis of experience. St. Thomas, in fact, following Aristotle and
the common scientific opinion, held that simpler living beings are
generated by the powers of the heavens (we might say, by “natural
forces”) acting upon inanimate substances, while more complex
living beings are generated by other living beings like them in kind.
He believed this not for purely theoretical reasons, but because he
saw it as the best account given the data available. This
particular account of abiogenesis (“spontaneous generation”) has
been falsified, at least as regards the living beings we see commonly
around us. But the general possibility of life being generated
through natural forces remains open, as does the possibility of one
kind of organism generating another kind. It is the task of empirical
science to determine whether, when, and how this actually happens.

Compatibility
of evolution and creation

In 2002 the International
Theological
Commission, with the approval of Cardinal Ratzinger, published the
document Communion and Stewardship, which addressed
the
question of evolution. While this document is not strictly
magisterial, it reflects the increasing openness of the Church to the
overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution, regarding it as
“virtually certain” that all living organisms have descended from
some first organism.16

The document goes on to
explain the
compatibility of creation and evolution. God not only makes things in
the world be, but makes them be causes.
According to
Catholic tradition, God, as a universal cause, “is the cause not
only of existence but also the cause of causes.” In creating and
conserving the universe, God wills to activate the secondary causes
that contribute to the natural order he intends. Through these
secondary, natural causes, “God causes to arise those conditions
required for the emergence and support of living organisms, and,
furthermore, for their reproduction and differentiation.”17

God is not just an
extra-powerful
cause, but is a transcendent cause. God’s ability
to use
secondary causes to achieve the ends he intends does not do away with
the proper nature and contingency of those secondary causes. “Divine
causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only
in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural
process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for
creation.” Because the scientist’s field of inquiry is limited to
secondary, created causes, he may conclude quite correctly that a
particular event or process resulted from chance or coincidence. Yet
to conclude, further, that the process is absolutely unguided, is to
make a philosophical assertion unjustified by science. “In the
Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic
variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of
evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be
demonstrated by science.” The very contingency and randomness
observed in an evolutionary process derives from God’s creative
action. “Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be
contingent because God made it so.” Hence, no
evolutionary
process can fall outside the bounds of divine providence.18

1John
C. Avise, Adaption and Complex Design (Washington,
DC: National Academies Press, 2007), 298, citing Buell’s preface to the
third edition of Of Pandas and People.

11Dembski
addresses a genetic algorithm that learned to play checkers at the
expert level, arguing that the information was inserted from the
beginning, that the programs were “guided,” because the programmers
“kept the criterion of winning constant” (No Free Lunch,
2nd edition [Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2007], 223). But while keeping “the criterion of winning
constant” may be part of the regularity such an algorithm presupposes,
there is nothing more natural than that the “criterion of winning” in
checkers should remain constant, and does not indicate any design of
the solution to the problem by the
programmers.

12See,
for example, Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between
Science & Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 2002), 177, and No Free Lunch, 287 ff.
Though Dembski relies on the argument from irreducible complexity, it
is not clear whether he perceived its strict necessity
for the validity of his argument.

13Cardinal
Schönborn, lecture at the
Austrian Academy of Sciences on March 4, 2009, Katholische Nachrichten,
http://www.kath.net/detail.php?id=22299. Accessed June 9, 2009.